O
by gophish1
Summary: Sydney tortures herself with her own guilt


title: O  
  
author: gophish  
  
rating: pg  
  
classification: drama, Sydney POV  
  
summary: Sydney tortures herself with her own self-guilt  
  
spoilers: "Snowman"  
  
disclaimer: these characters do NOT belong to me  
  
distribution: just ask  
  
feedback: hit me  
  
O cunning Love, with tears thou keep'st me blind  
  
Lest eyes well-seeing thy foul faults should find. -- Sonnet 148, William Shakespeare  
  
You should pull yourself away from the window, Sydney. Stop counting raindrops, splatters, noises, breaths; all are distractions of your own guilt. Coffees taste dryer, candies less sweet, tears increasingly bitter. Although you've tried for the past set of days, you can't seem to analyze the simplistic detail of your own surroundings. It's as if you never removed that mask in Venice; and now you realize you never should have.  
  
Outside the rain pours from the gutters in drops of threes; the beat of the sidewalk keeps a steady rhythm of six; your heart pounds in staccato unison. The dichotomy between yourself and the natural process is something of a distant memory; a lot has changed in five years. The way you see yourself, those around you, those close to you, all seem farther and farther away with every bit of progress you make. O how those memories fade; reoccurring dreams that disappear into nothingness manifested within ghosts from the past.  
  
The life you once knew now holds the intricate pieces of your own personal struggle between you and Noah. The man you once knew; the one from whom you had learned so much was now gone along with those distant thoughts. The underlying source of his demise and the images that projected from his failing eyes in those final moments has circled through your head for days. The rain outside brings only an empty solitude.  
  
That knife. O that knife covered in tear-stained blood on that kitchen floor. How you wish you had left that mask unveiled; left him on the floor and ran back to Dixon, never laying eyes on that wrapped arm. How you wish you had gone back to waiting for Noah to call in another five years, anticipating that pristine moment while life unassumingly passes you by. But no use reminiscing what might have been while life carries on without him. As the rain dies down, so do your tears, and with them, the little thoughts of what was, is, and can never be.  
  
You try to believe those words from Vaughn; that Noah Hicks was undeniably bad. You know it's true, but still you refuse to accept it. Re-convincing yourself, no matter the energy you put into it, is a difficult argument to win for it just doesn't seem so. That he could have betrayed you by lying, yet somehow managed to love you still; how could you have been so blinded? O God! These tears must stop, regardless of how much they represent your hidden empathy. In so many respects, you deserve to be betrayed by someone that you put every ounce of faith into trusting; you live by that premise of lying to everyone around you that isn't involved with saving the world.  
  
Finally pulling yourself away from the window, you decide on a shower. Cleansing away the guilt is something you can only hope to achieve, but it somehow seems possible. In the cold and empty bathroom, thoughts of Danny immediately race through your mind; how you turned that shower on, climbed in with him and told your story. Even after a thousand showers, the memory of that confession still haunts you. This time you crawl in alone, letting the warm sprinkles of water peck at your face and run down your torso, your hips, your thighs, chasing after the drain. Your legs give way to the pressure. You fall, pressing against the slippery floor beneath you and again burst into tears that disappear with the chaos of water running down from your body.  
  
The impossibilities that have encompassed your devotion: trust, murder, revenge, betrayal, jealousy, and pain. They all offer meager justifications of what might have been. If you could only trade places and give up everything you've worked for; but alas, you still would remain an empty shell of the Sydney you knew seven years ago. The Sydney that hadn't been so emotional and didn't loose it all at the sight of a spring rain shower; that didn't consistently mourn over the guilt in the passing of those close to her.  
  
The sound of water coming down from the showerhead briefly distracts you from your thinking. You look up to notice a crack in the wall just above the rim of the shower doors; at least a foot long, it might have been there for months and you haven't even noticed. How something like that can be part of your every day routine of life and living, but somehow still remain overlooked with such casual nonchalance. That crack; O that insignificant break in the wall so eloquently describes your emotion. Something so simple and irrelevant brings a shallow comfort and gives you the strength to rise.  
  
You slowly turn the knobs clockwise and run your hands over the warm wet flesh of your face still swollen from the tears. Grabbing a nearby towel, you wrap it around your body and go back out towards the window from which you had been sitting, earlier. The rain has stopped for the moment; everything outside just beginning to recuperate. This shall pass, as too will the grief and the memories.  
  
The guilt, however, remains long after the misery; the tears, just as the rain, will come again.  
  
end 


End file.
